Routine takes its toll on an employee’s mental and emotional health because of the boredom it causes. Long work hours, conflicts at the workplace, deadlines, stress etc. strike their blow on the employee’s morale. All this leads to occasional demotivation. Periodically, the employee feels “down”. She lacks enthusiasm. Her energy is sapped. She loses her interest in work. Her drive is missing. To help the employees continue to perform at their cheerful best, the company must take care to keep their motivation levels high. How can we improve or maintain our employees’ motivation? Here are some suggestions:
The Biggest Motivation
Work can become the best motivator if it is the right one. If a person loves his work, he will never feel bored. His enthusiasm will always be high. If one does not like his work, he will resent it and will feel demotivated. So, we must provide the right work to people, as per their abilities and liking. We must try to accurately establish employee-job fit as much as possible. While evaluating new candidates, we must try to find out whether the qualification and the passion of the candidate match or not. Passion about work is the ultimate motivation. Also, we must take care that we assign clear and right responsibilities to our employees such that there is no confusion in their minds and they enjoy working.
Meaningful Work
If employees feel that their work contributes significantly to some larger purpose, they feel a sense of pride. They find their work meaningful. We should help them find a true meaning to their work beyond doing mundane things and filling hours. For this, we must show them the larger purpose of our business. We can explain the larger purpose by articulating the mission of our business to all. E.g. A nurse attending patients in a hospital is bringing relief to them, helping them in their recovery process. A waiter in a restaurant brings happiness to people by helping them enjoy their meals.
Recognition
Recognition is a basic need of every human being. When their efforts are appreciated and recognized, it gives one big boost to employees’ morale. We must provide generous, regular appreciation and positive feedback to our people. We must acknowledge their every good action and encourage such behavior.
Employee Engagement
Our employees are human beings. They are not machines. We must engage them with our business as human beings. We should help them build an emotional connection with their work. They must be made to feel like a part of the business. We must make them feel pride in working with us and must involve them in activities beyond work also. Regular activities other than work must be a part of the schedule to break the monotony of work. Some employee engagement ideas are given here:
- Birthday celebrations
- Wishing on anniversaries
- Internal newsletter or magazine
- Festival celebrations
- Sports events
- Competitions
- Theme days
- Training programs
- Picnics and Trips
- Celebration events with family
- Creating a knowledge sharing system
- Employee suggestion scheme
- Yoga sessions
- Meditation sessions
- Talent contests
- Fun fairs
- Film shows
Development of the Employees
Non-monetary recognition is one of the most effective solutions to improve employee motivation. Recognition in the form of training and development works wonders for employee motivation because it’s a proof that the company is investing the necessary time and resources for helping the employees to acquire new skills. An employee who believes her employer is genuinely concerned about her career development is likely to exhibit an increased level of job satisfaction and ultimately, better performance as a team player.
Work-life Balance
We must recognize that just like us, our employees also have a life beyond work. They also have a family, they also have to attend social commitments and they also have to take care of their health. We are the boss, so we can attend to our life beyond business easily because we may get various exemptions and we don’t have to follow the rules which our employees have to follow. We should give them enough free time. We should refrain from the belief that only physical presence ensures good performance. An unhappy, anxious and worried employee can’t perform to her fullest. We should not exploit our employees. Of course, we must make and follow rules so that employees with negative work attitude don’t take undue advantage of our liberal approach, but we should make sure that genuine, sincere employees don’t suffer due to the rules which are made to control some undisciplined and misguided employees.
Positive Feedback
Almost everybody wants to learn, to improve, to be better and to do better. Everybody needs feedback. If our employee makes a mistake, we must point it out to him, but the manner in which this is done must be inoffensive. We must not criticize their actions or errors in public. We should take care that they do not feel insulted. No negative feedback must be given in public, in the presence of others, because it hurts the person’s self-esteem and confidence. We must provide such a negative feedback only in private. Yes, if we wish to provide some positive feedback, it must be done in public. Always remember that feedback is given to improve their work performance and not to make them feel inadequate or small. So, always praise in public and preach in private, with positive objectivity.
Acceptance
We must accept that our employees are also human beings. All human beings have different strengths and weaknesses. No two people are same. We must never compare one employee with another such that it undermines one. By comparing two unique people and making one feel inferior does not improve that person. On the contrary, it demotivates them immensely. We must accept their individuality and try to make use of their strengths.
Respect
People love to be there where they are respected. We must make sure that our employees get their due respect. We must take care that all in the company behave with each other respectfully and their self-respect is not hurt. We must respect their time, contribution, opinions and suggestions. We must speak with them politely. Anger destroys people’s peace of mind. We must not get angry on our employees without proper reasons or beyond reasonable limits. Also, anger must be targeted towards their actions and not towards themselves.
Listening
Everybody wants to be listened. So do our employees. We must listen to them truly and empathically. When an employee tells us something, we must also try to understand her feelings. Sometimes, even if we are not able to solve their problems, simply listening to them relieves a lot of their anxiety and stress.
Proper Compensation
Money is not always a good motivator. Its motivating impact does not last longer. If we give handsome increment to someone this year, he will be very happy now. But, next year also his expectation will be for a similar raise. If we don’t fulfill that expectation, he will be unhappy. In the long run we realize that nobody is always happy with their salary increments. So, money motivates, but temporarily.
At the same time, we must remember that everybody needs money. Of course, it is wrong to think that everybody works for money alone. Money may not motivate always, but it may become a cause of demotivation, if not given as per merit and right expectations. We must pay people properly, as per the prevailing market rates and their qualification and experience.
Sometimes, we don’t recognize the value of our old employees. We take them for granted and give them much lower salary than the newcomers. Such discrimination kills the employees’ motivation. We should be just and fair in giving compensation to our employees. We must remember that right manpower is the biggest asset and sometimes, we realize its value only when it is gone. Generally, we have to pay higher salary for finding a new employee who replaces an old one.
It is said that if we pay peanuts, we will only get monkeys. The mediocre people, however old or experienced, are not welcome anywhere. They will stick with us even if we pay less because they don’t have any other option. If the person has talent, he will get good money elsewhere and he may leave. We should not compare good employees with mediocre ones while deciding compensation. In short, we should not discourage the good employees by paying them less. We should take care of our human assets and not neglect them by ignoring their worth.
(Expert advice to GROW your business wherever you are, whenever you want.
SMEBusinessGuide.com… https://goo.gl/E3pfoQ)
WHAT YOU CAN READ NEXT
PREVIOUS POST:
Giving Bonus To Employees
